The Americas – Food That We Make

Porotos Granados

hannahnicklin — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:20:56 +0000

Super simple brilliant veg stew, this, one of those vegan meals that inexplicably tastes meaty, might be the beans and paprika. Simple so long as you have a knife sharp enough to do butternut squash. Careful when you chop it, slippery veg, that. Anyway, that’s what adds to the prep time on this one, peeling an’ chopping that there squash. I’d be generous with the paprika if you just have regular stuff, and with the seasoning, too. Stupidly nice dinner with a big hunk of bread, or full enough to be a lunch on its own. TASTY. Original recipe by that HFW bloke in his ‘River Cottage Veg Everyday’ book.

Prep: 10 mins | Cook: 30 mins | Serves: 4-6
Nutritional info: Per 1/4 335kcal 51g carbs 10g fat 12g protein

Ingredients:

Soften the onions and garlic for 5-10 minutes

add 3/4 of the oregano and the paprika, stir for a minute

Add the bay leaf, drained tinned beans, squash, stock, and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the squash is just getting tender

Then add the french beans and sweetcorn and simmer for 5 minutes more

Just as the green beans are ready, season very well (I used one and half tsp of salt and loads of pepper), add the last bit of oregano, and serve!

Very filling. Good stuff.

Mexican Tomato & Bean Soup

hannahnicklin — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:17:24 +0000

Something spicy to keep me perked up throughout the final weeks of the PhD, this. A very tasty, hearty vegan soup with a good kick to it. I used medium chillis, but adjust amount of chilli and strength of chilli to taste – a couple of medium hot as opposed to 3 medium ones would be pretty good. Quick recipe, too, easily cooked and eaten within a lunch break. Try it, it’s nice. Also, if you were to add some brown lentils to it, and remove the passata, it’d make a stonking vegan chilli.

Prep: 10 mins | Cook: 15 mins | Serves: 4-6
Nutritional Info: (per 1/4 with 1 tbsp yoghurt): 211 kcal 27g carbs 8g fat 8g protein

Ingredients:

First off, gently soften the onion for 5 minutes or so

Then add the garlic, chillis, and cumin, stir for a minute or two

Then add the chopped tomatoes, oregano, beans (I used black eyed ones), passata, sugar, and season well. Simmer for 10 minutes

Just before serving, chuck in most of the chopped coriander, squeeze in the juice of 1 lime. Check seasoning.

And then serve with a dollop of yoghurt, and the last bits of coriander:

Close up!

Courgette onion and pine nut quinoa

hannahnicklin — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:43:20 +0000

This is one of the River Cottage Veg Every Day recipes I recently typed up into my recipe app. A simple one, cheap if you have pine nuts in already. Quinoa is ace, by the way, really nutty, and satisfying texture, and JUST LOOK at how awesome it looks (pics at the bottom), the grain sort of separates into a heart and a curly outer bit and is really good looking. Is that a weird thing to say about food? Anyway, I reckon there must be a glut of courgettes out there because of all the rain, so grab some quinoa and give this a go. Seasonal and yummy. Vegan if you use a butter alternative.

Serves: 4 | Prep Time: 5 mins | Cook Time: 25-30 mins
Nutritional Info: 338kcal 26g carbs 22g fat 9g protein

Ingredients pic:

First off heat the butter and oil until the butter is melted. Then add in the chopped courgettes, onions, thyme, and a good amount of seasoning. Sautee for about 20 minutes

MEANWHILE. Rinse the Quinoa really well in cold water (anti gravity water pictured no required) then bring to the boil in a pan of water, and simmer. Cook both quinoa and veg for about 20 minutes.

About 5 minutes until both are done, add the garlic to the courgettes, and toast your pine nuts (in a dry pan over hot heat stirring quickly for about 1-2 mins)

When the quinoa is ready (tender but still firm… if you know what I mean. Al dente.) drain, then add to the courgette and onions with the parsley, a squeeze of lemon and season more if required.

Serve topped with the pine nuts. Very tasty, just the right amount for a hot lunch.

And pretty.

Red wine and brandy mushrooms with green beans and polenta…

hannahnicklin — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:10:01 +0000

I’m a bit of a fan of mushrooms. And wine. And I’ve recently discovered that a tsp of brandy in my soya hot chocolate makes it EVEN BETTER (also includes cinnamon). This recipe is basically the best. Sorry, Alex, I know you don’t like them. Fast, and tasty, add more salt than you’d expect to the polenta, and a bit of herbs, maybe a touch of flavoured oil if you’re a bit disconcerted by it not being like potato. Which, let’s all be honest, it looks like and is often used to replace it.

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Makes: 2
Ingredients: 377 kcal, 58g carbs, 12g protein, 8g fat (1g saturated), 2g fibre, 1006mg salt

Ingredients, check out the fact my porcini has ITS OWN LITTLE BOX. Oh yeah. That’s how I live.

Pop boiling water over said porcini to soak

in another pan, heat the oil, and fry the garlic in it for 10-15 seconds…

Before adding the sliced mushrooms. Chestnut for this one, think a nice mix might be better though.

Cook them for 10-15 minutes until ‘wilted’ which I took to mean ‘lovely and soft’.

Take out the porcini mushrooms from the boiling water (now all rehydrated) and keep the liquid, chop the mushrooms, and add about 100ml of the mushroom water to the mushrooms. After it’s reduced a bit, add the tomato puree, thyme, porcini, red wine and brandy. Simmer

basically you want a rich sauce, this doesn’t take very long, but the longer you cook the deeper the flavours, so I simmered for about 10-15 minutes topping up with wine or mushroom water when it got too dry.

With about 5 minute to go, chuck your french beans into boiling water, and over another medium-high heat add the salt, polenta, and 700ml water and whisk as you go to get out any lumps, a bit of garlic oil and some more thyme at this point would be nice, too. Be liberal with the salt. Just as you’re ready to serve test and alter the seasoning in the mushroom pan if necessary, then serve on a bed of the polenta, with the beans.

Comme ci.

Spring Vegetables with Pesto Polenta

hannahnicklin — Mon, 28 May 2012 19:47:58 +0000

So it turns out Quark isn’t just a category of sub-atomic particle, it’s a kind of curd cheese of German origin. WHO KNEW. The people from the GoodFood 101 veggie dishes book, that’s who. This is the closest there is to instant homemade food, takes 15 minutes, TOPS, it’s stupidly healthy, and you get to use something called ‘quark’, everybody’s a winner. I imagine you could veganise this with some vegan pesto, and using vegan-friendly soft cheese replacement or natural soya yogurt in place of the quark. It doesn’t have the richness of flavour of a dish you might cook for longer, but as a quick-hit fresh spring supper, (I’m saying supper like I’m a Tory or something), it’s just what you need.

Prep Time: 5 mins | Cook Time: 10 mins | Servings: 2
Nutrition: 394 kcal, 15g protein, 40g carbs, 21g fat, 3g sat, 4g fibre, 1.27g salt

Here goes:

First up prep the veg, and chop the garlic and parsley. combine the garlic parsley and lemon zest now, you’ll struggle for time later!

next set two pans on to boil, one with stock (below is my homemade stock mix getting to work) and one of boiling water for either boiling or steaming the veg (I don’t have a steaming thing, so I boiled, think steaming is probably better, though)

Once the stock is boiling, pour in the polenta, turn down the heat, and whisk until stiff, then add the quark, whisking continuously

At the same time start the veg

After 5 minutes, whisk the pesto into the polenta and season well

Spoon it onto a plate, drain the veg, sprinkle them with the parsely/garlic/lemon mix and toss to combine, pop the veg/parsley mix on top of the polenta, grind a bit of black pepper over the top and drizzle a bit of olive oil. Serve!

Oaty chocolate orange cookies

hannahnicklin — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:33:05 +0000

Dear reader, I am typing this from a foetal position on the floor, you shouldn’t let this put you off though, these cookies are really tasty, the only problem is I just made enough for approximately 40 people (well, this and another flavour), and ate approximately half of the batter. This is the noise I am making: mrrrrrrrhhhh.

These are easy. Cookies are easy. You should make them. And find some people to help you eat them. And come and eat some of mine, tomorrow, at Performance in the Pub. Yes. Plug.

COOKIES.

Prep Time: 30 mins | Cook Time: 20 mins | Servings: Makes 16
Nutritional Info: 167 kcalories, protein 3g, carbohydrate 19g, fat 9 g, saturated fat 5g, fibre 2g, sugar 11g, salt 0.18 g

Ingredients:

Heat your oven to 180’c. Get out some baking tins, and a wire rack. grease the baking tins, line them with baking paper if you want to be slightly wasteful of paper, but conserve water by not having to wash them up. Weigh out the butter and sugar, cream together. If you just got the butter out of the fridge you can zap it for bursts of 8 seconds in a microwave until soft, but don’t melt it.

Add the mashed banana, vanilla essence, and eggs, and beat together until smoothly mixed

In a separate bowl mix together all of the remaining dry ingredients.

Add this to the wet mix, fold together until all lovely and clumpy, and then spoon onto the baking sheets well spaced apart. 1 Tbsp per cookie, and in a sort of heaped oval that’s technically called a ‘quenelle’. I don’t know why it needs a funny name, but what it does it make sure the cookie doesn’t get too flat when it cooks. GOOEY MIDDLES.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned. Leave to rest for a minute or two, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Eat all of them. Weep a little. Write a blog post with nice pictures.

Classic Blueberry Muffins

hannahnicklin — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:24:05 +0000

Today I ordered what I think is technically known as a ‘fuckton’ of vegan baking books. I’ve decided to DOUBLE TEAM a vegan food fair in Leicester in a couple months with my mum. But they’ve not arrived yet. And I wanted to bake. So here I am, making non-vegan baked goods; deal with it. A classic of the muffins, this, with some nice touches (mashed banana, and the zesty lemon (is that tautologous?) with the pale sweet taste of blueberries really nice with sharpness of buttermilk). If you do want to de-lactose it, you can try using soya cream with a couple of tbsp of lemon juice stirred through to make up for the buttermilk. Can’t do anything about the egg for vegans, but WORRY NOT, I’ll be on that soon. This recipe is pretty unchanged from the original online, it’s pretty good, but I’ve upped the sugar a little. Also, in terms of muffins, these are good, but they still don’t rival the store cupboard ones. Which have blueberries in them, PLUS 3 EXTRA FRUITS, and cinnamon, I do like cinnamon. Also, I think if I was doing this again I might MIX IT UP and use sweet blackberries and grate in some apple. I am muffin-fickle.

Prep Time: 20 mins | Cook Time: 20-25 mins | Servings: 12
Nutritional info: (per muffin) 206 kcalories, protein 5g, carbohydrate 36g, fat 6 g, saturated fat 1g, fibre 2g, sugar 16g, salt 0.43 g

Ingredients:

So, first off, preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Sort out your muffin cases in tins. Then set aside 1 tbsp of the caster sugar, then combine the flours, baking powder, all the light sugar, the rest of the caster sugar, and the lemon zest in a large bowl. Mix. MIX!

Mash the banana. Mashed banana does not look pleasant.

beat the egg, then add and mix together with the buttermilk, rapeseed oil, banana until smooth

(pictured pre-mixed)

So this is where you try to do AS LITTLE mixing as possible – the more you mix, the flatter your muggins get; add the liquid ingredients to the dry, and mix with a large metal spoon until just combined – add the blueberries just before it’s looking combined, as they’ll be delicate.

Spoon into muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes.

While that happens, squeeze half the lemon into the tbsp of sugar and mix

Just after the muffins come out of the oven, brush this sticky ace-ness over the top of each muffin. Leave the muffins to cool in the tin for at least 20 minutes more.

And there you go! Mm…

capsicum-free tomato salsa

hannahnicklin — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:30:00 +0000

The brilliant falafel burger recipe that I posted up here the other week is best served with salsa and guacamole. Unfortunately the only salsa you can buy in the supermarket is full of regular peppers, which make me really ill. So this is a nice cool salsa with only chilli peppers for heat, a version based on this. But with a few changes. Worth trying, very simple.

Prep Time: 10 mins | Servings: Serves 8 | Nutrition per serving: 55 kcal, 4g carbs, 3g fat, 1g protein

To make, put all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, season and mix thoroughly. SIMPLE AS THAT.

Soya hot chocolate. Better than all the other hot chocolates.

hannahnicklin — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:35:00 +0000

Being lactose intolerant and stuff I’ve been making this soya hot chocolate for so long, that it’s only just occurred to me that people might not know how to make a yummy vegan version of THE KING OF HOT DRINKS – especially if you’re used to using the horrible hot chocolate mixes with milk powder, etc. In fact this is the only hot drink that I like (you all know that tea and coffee are horrible, right?), and having tried it with regular milk, I can confidently say that even if you’re not vegan or lactose intolerant you should ALWAYS make hot chocolate with soya milk; it’s thicker, and slightly sweeter. You’re going to want to experiment a little with sugar depending on what brand soya milk you use (Alpro Soya sweetened, for example, is much more vanilla-y and sweeter than the version I use, for example, so I’d back off on the sugar), or even try almond milk or hazelnut milk. Here’s my basic recipe though:

Serves: 1 large mug
Prep/cook time: 5 mins
Nutritional info: 172 kcal

MAKING:

pour about 15ml of the soya milk into the bottom of the mug you’re making the hot chocolate in, and then put the rest on a pan on the hob. Keep a very close eye on it and don’t be tempted to microwave it, soya milk tips over into crazy foaming monster stage very quickly. don’t walk away from it. You have been warned. Anyway, while bringing the soya milk to the boil, put a tiny bit of cinnamon (like a 1/12 of a tsp), the heaped cocoa, and sugar in with the 15ml of cool soya milk and mix to a loose paste. Add a little more of warm soya from the pan to loosen it if you want.

When the soya milk is bubbling, and just before it starts to foam, pour the milk into the mug about a 1/4 full, thoroughly mix the paste so you don’t have clumps of paste in the bottom, then add the rest of the just-foaming soya milk (catching the skin bit that sometimes forms, if you can)

et voila!

Variations: mix half soya cream with soya milk, and add melted spiced chocolate to the paste for SUPER luxury hot chocolate

My First Chilli (vegan, lentil)

hannahnicklin — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:51:00 +0000

So I’ve never made a chilli before. I don’t know why. We never really did spicy food at home, and me and my mum can’t eat peppers, and frankly, if you’ve got a load of mince, why aren’t you making spaghetti bolognaise? Best food. So yeah, never had any kind of chilli, but I’m getting WELL into my lentils and chickpeas at the moment (file under: things you are not allowed to be excessively enthused about), and spotted this (which includes no bad peppers) in my new Bumper Veggie Cookbook and thought I’d give it a go. Turns out it’s like spicy, yummy bolognaise but with that awesome grainy texture you get from lentils. Yes I said awesome. Also massively cheap.

Here we go, ingredients (I left off the chopped tomatoes, but photoshopped in a flawless stand-in, as you’ll see).

As an aside, I’m just about old enough to have caught re-runs of the Young Ones, which is why I was surprised to find I liked lentils. I would be interested to see a mapping of public opinion on lentils vs that show’s popularity. I say I would be interested, but I’ve spent all day transcribing PhD interviews, so quite honestly I would be interested to see some moss right now.

INFORMATION:

Prep Time: 10 | Cook Time: 30 | Servings: 2 (this is a recipe for 6 scaled down, hence weird proportions)

Nutritional Info: 195kcal, 2g fat (trace sat), 32g carbs, 0.1g salt

ACTION:

Cook the onions until soft, add the coriander, cumin and paprika.

Combine the garlic, sun dried tomatoes, chilli, wine and stock and add to the pan. Cover & simmer for 5-7 mins. Uncover and simmer until the liquid has almost gone.

Stir in the lentils and tomatoes and season.

Simmer, uncovered, for 15 mins or until thick, add sugar to taste, remove from heat. Blend 1/4 of the mix, combine with the unblended mix.

Serve with yoghurt and rice. Sprinkle with a bit of parsley if you’re feeling fancy, like me.

FANCY.